Pearl Lindeman has been sewing for as long as she can remember.

“I’ve always loved sewing of any kind — even if it was patching,” Pearl said. “We did a lot of that on the farm.”

She also inherited a love of quilting from her mother. She has on her bed a Lone Star Quilt they pieced together on a treadle sewing machine.

In her home hangs a sign, “When life hands you scraps, make quilts.”

Among the more unusual quilts she made is one using the neckties of a fellow church member, Arnold Schember.

“His wife said he never threw a tie away,” Pearl said.

The quilt involved so much sewing, she said, that her husband, Harry, had to help her guide it through the machine. “We just sewed and sewed and sewed.”

But the result was good, and Schember very appreciative. “It was definitely the most unusual quilt I ever made,” she added.

She remembers going to work one day and returning home to find that Harry had been working on a quilt she’d laid out.

“I said, ‘Harry! Have you been sewing?’” she recalled. And from that point on, he sewed and cut out quilt blocks.

“If they didn’t come together just right, he’d tear it out,” she said. “He took pride in his work. I was so proud of him. He was a gentleman and a gentle man.”

She joked that after Harry took up sewing, she rarely got to go near the sewing machine.

Pearl grew up in Walters with 10 brothers and three sisters in the Haukoos clan. “We were so blessed having a big family,” she said. The family was featured in the Star Tribune and Lutheran Brotherhood Magazine in 1990 for eight of the brothers and two of the sisters celebrating 50th wedding anniversaries.

Pearl met Harry when he was part of a thrashing crew. “He wore blue overalls and a blue chambray shirt and had the bluest eyes,” she recalled.

He asked her for a date when she was hoeing the strawberry field in bare feet — he’d already asked her mother’s permission.

After they were married, the couple rented farms in the Mansfield and Freeborn areas.

“I’m so glad I raised my four daughters on the farm,” Pearl said. “We had a big garden and we canned. It was a hard life, but a happy life.”

They moved to South Broadway Avenue Albert Lea in the mid-1950s and Harry got a job as a loading supervisor at Weyerhauser. After retiring from there, he worked making skating rinks.

Age: 93

Address: Luther Place Apartments, Albert Lea

Livelihood: retired

Family: four daughters: Judy of Marshall, Carol of New Richmond, Wis., Colleen of Alden and Mary of Florida; 13 grandchildren; 26 great-grandchildren

Interesting fact: She collects bells, a tradition she started after her wedding day when she and her late husband, Harry, pulled the bell at the Little Brown Church in the Vale in Nashua, Iowa.

“Harry wore many caps,” Pearl said.

Pearl went to work outside the home, too, once she moved to town. She worked at Hotel Albert in the Spanish Dining Room, for District 241 for 11 years and at a cafe in Skyline Mall as well.

For all those years living in Albert Lea, she’s been active in many facets of Salem Lutheran Church, including the choir, singing solos and taking part in circle activities. “I think I’ve done everything except be on the council,” she said.

The couple moved to Dunham Street in 1962. They were married for nearly 60 years. Harry died in 1998. Pearl moved to Luther Place last year.

Pearl still quilts regularly at Salem Lutheran Church as part of the Sew N’ Tell Quilters. The group makes quilts for charity.

“We’re such a happy group,” she said.

She also recently completed a baby quilt for a new great-granddaughter.

She plays piano by ear and has enjoyed all types of crafts over the years.

“It’s good to keep your hands busy,” Pearl said.

She still does volunteer work at St. John’s, stuffing pillows and helping groups of people that come into the nursing home to sing find the right pages in the song books.